


The Constellation of Touch

by what_alchemy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Barebacking, Body Worship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Senses, frank discussion of bodily functions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:06:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5516597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Months after Fisk is put away, nothing's right between the partners at Nelson and Murdock. But Christmas is here, and Matt is still expected at the Nelson house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Constellation of Touch

**Author's Note:**

> I am pretending, along with the rest of fandom, that Foggy and Matt met at the beginning of undergrad instead of the beginning of law school.
> 
> I have also imagined a whole new background and familial situation for Foggy unrelated to comics canon, because of reasons.

Foggy knew by the look on Matt’s face that he would try to wriggle out of Christmas one last time. And, because Matt was really paternalistic about his self-flagellation, he would try to convince Foggy it was for his own good. For Foggy’s comfort, or convenience, or some bullshit Saint Murdock reason. He had that wet baby bird look he always wore when he was about to sacrifice himself for, whatever, a donut or something — shoulders sloped, mouth a crooked little downward arc, eyes big and tragic behind his glasses, brow dimpled. He stopped in front of the seats Foggy had picked on the Metro North, the corner ones facing each other with plenty of leg room. He propped his cane in front of himself and worried at the handle with both hands.

“Don’t even start,” Foggy said, standing to take Matt’s duffle bag off his shoulder. “Sit down and shut up.” He shoved the duffle into the overhead, and when he went to sit back down, Matt’s frown was deeper but he’d lowered his ass into the seat.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah well,” Foggy said. “Maybe reading your face is _my_ super power. Can’t even turn that into a good gig; I want my money back.”

That earned him a brittle smile, sadder than anything. Foggy clenched his jaw and looked out the window onto the platform. Off-peak tickets cost less and gave them the lack of crowd they liked, but it was shit for people watching. It was shit for using other people’s antics to avoid the way sadness and frustration and apprehension roiled in his belly at Matt’s proximity.

“It’s just, I don’t know,” Matt said. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s your parents’ house.”

“Yeah, it’s _my_ parents’ house,” Foggy snapped. “Where we’ve been going for twelve years like clockwork, where you’re basically the Second Coming Amen, and where I’d be subjected to the goddamn third degree if I showed up without you. You owe me this, Murdock. And if you want out because you’re the uncomfortable one, get off this train right now, but don’t sit there and pretend you’re willing to be alone and miserable on Christmas for my sake. Don’t lie and then act like I’m the liar.”

Matt’s mouth snapped closed and Foggy squeezed his eyes shut. He could hear Matt swallow. He forced himself to look at Matt straight on.

“Sorry,” he said. “If you don’t want to be with my family this year, I get it, okay? I’ll make up an excuse. Just go if you’re gonna go.”

“I love your family, Foggy,” Matt said. “I guess I just don’t get why you want me to come if you’re… if you’re so mad at me.”

Foggy wondered what Matt was getting off him right now, other than his anger, transparent for months. He was supposed to know, fine, but never bring it up. Those were the rules. Could Matt hear his stomach? Did the way Foggy flushed raise the temperature in the room? What about the people in the next car, or in the bathrooms, or over on the platforms? Every little thing people hid from everyone else to make the world spin as smoothly as possible — did Matt get all that, too? Just by smell, by taste, by heartbeat? 

“It would be worse for me,” Foggy said eventually, “to go without you.” He threw up a hand because Matt got that too, didn’t he? Even if he couldn’t see. Shifting air and tiny winds or what have you. “And don’t use _that_ as an excuse to torture yourself, either. Come or don’t based on your own shit, Murdock.” He squared his shoulders and looked at Matt dead on, firing-squad style. 

Matt tilted his head and faced Foggy’s general direction. Not quite where someone who wasn’t blind would look, even if they were avoiding his gaze, and it was so familiar, so _comforting_ , that Foggy wanted to beat himself up, just a little bit, for finding it endearing.

“Of course I want to go,” Matt said. He opened his mouth to say more, but he swallowed it back and tucked his chin inward, lips pursed like a politician who’s sorry he’s been caught. 

Foggy let his breath out slow and measured. He was so damn _tired_ of these silences, but to Matt they weren’t silent at all, were they? They were louder than any shouting. He turned away to rest his head on the window.

—

They probably would have spent the entire two hour train ride playing conversational chicken if someone hadn’t beefed so loudly in the bathroom that the whole car rattled. A smattering of giggles rose up around them before people could get a grip on themselves, but everyone took their place in the comfortable social lie that farts were not totally frigging hilarious soon enough. Foggy glanced at Matt only to find him smirking, and damned if it didn’t make Foggy smile.

Then, the bathroom door slammed open and the flatulent offender exited, only to flee into a different car. People near the bathroom grumbled and moved seats, and even on the other end of the car, Foggy got a whiff — the guy had clearly had Emergency Sewage Ass. While Foggy could feel for anyone with a bad case of ESA, his sympathies were now almost entirely with his own nose and the noses around him. Foggy casually arranged his hand over his nostrils in a classic I’m-thinking-really-intensely-not-shielding-my-face-from-toxic-fumes look, but when he got another glimpse of Matt, he found a perfectly smooth mask in place — no smirk, no furrow, no reaction at all. 

In other words, he was looking straight at Matt’s repression face.

“Oh God, this must be so much worse for you,” he said. Foggy imagined a cloud of methane in sci-fi green rolling over Matt and swirling all around him like that thing from Lost. 

Matt huffed out half a laugh, and one corner of his mouth ticked up.

“Honestly,” he said, “I mostly have to keep a lid on laughing, same as anyone else.” 

“But I mean, even _I_ can smell that that dude just expelled thirteen rotting badger corpses from his ass, so what are you getting right now?”

Matt tilted his head, looking fond. It made Foggy’s heart kind of squeezy, and Matt probably knew what “squeezy” was both clinically and aurally and Foggy wished it would stop doing things like that full stop. 

“You really wanna know?”

“No,” Foggy said with a decisive wave. “Hell no, damn bud.”

Matt’s smirk grew into a smile, Foggy’s heart went squeezy, and, Foggy had to surrender to the total inevitability of it, just like he’d been doing since Matt first walked into their dorm room. Matt must be used to it by now anyway. And if Foggy was a little bitter about that, well. Matt could suck that up, too.

Matt shifted in his seat as if getting comfortable. He pushed his cane forward so it was resting on his knee but he could still worry at the handle.

“People fart all the time, you know?” Matt said. “It’s one of those completely mundane, normal, necessary bodily functions that the social contract has rendered rude and unacceptable.”

“Wait, are you telling me you’re totally cool with farts?” Foggy said. “All those times I ripped one in the dorms and you hit me with a pillow were for show?”

Matt swung his steel-toed boot right into Foggy’s shin.

“Ow! How dare you pulverize my delicate body parts!” 

“ _No_ , you 100% deserved to be hit with a pillow for those,” Matt said, smirk firmly in place. Foggy pouted and rubbed his leg. “I’m just saying, do you know how _often_ people let loose? I mean — your silent but deadlies, your tiny peepers, your airy bellows, your all sound no furies, your hot beef steamers, your whistling windies, your shit rippers, your glute clenchers, your bubble beepers, your crops dusters, your cloud sinkers, your sloppy blow-outs. All night and all day, Foggy, all around and everywhere, public or private. Everyone, all the time. Is farting.”

Foggy’s eyebrows did their damnedest to creep up to his hairline as he stared at Matt Murdock, his best friend, his business partner, his chesty squeezer.

“Oh my God, Matt,” he said. “Oh my God, you’re a _fart connoisseur_ and I never knew.”

“What? I wouldn’t say _connoisseur_ —”

“You have names for all of them! Cute ones!”

“Well, how would you describe them?”

“What about the smell? How can you stand it?” Foggy leaned in, whispering frantically. “Oh my God, Matt, _everyone’s farting and you can smell it all!_ ”

Matt threw back his head and laughed. He pushed his glasses up his nose and planted his cane on the floor, shaking his head. 

“I have to think about it differently than regular people,” he said. “I know my, uh, _mentor_ isn’t your favorite person, but I’ve got to admit without his guidance and philosophy, I probably would have lost my mind a long time ago.”

“You have a philosophy about farts?”

Matt’s smile dimmed and he sat back, shoulders slumping.

“Never mind,” he said. “I know it’s gross.”

“Hey, no.” Foggy bumped his knees into Matt’s. He wanted that grin back, the laugh and the ease — the feeling like they were perfectly in step and glad about it, same as ever. “I want to know everything. I promise not to gag.”

The train was loud, even without many people in it. The train was loud just by virtue of being a giant metal tube propelling itself forward on tracks laid a zillion years ago. Maybe that was weird for Matt, too. He did avoid the subway, after all. Foggy made it a point to ask later, maybe after Matt explained about farts. Foggy leaned in, elbows propped on his knees, and Matt mirrored him.

“It’s… hard to describe,” Matt said. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Okay,” Foggy said. “How about you tell me, like, the satellite effects of a fart? Like ignore the smell part for now and tell me if it sounds like little ass trumpets all around the city. That would be _awesome_.”

Matt laughed again, his eyes crinkling and his mouth a perfect curve. Foggy hadn’t seen that in a long time. He ignored the pang in his heart as surely as Matt did.

“I guess that’s the thing,” Matt said. “I _can_ pick the senses apart like that, but only if I concentrate, and I only concentrate if it’s important. So far, no human gas has been important enough for me not to take it as a whole, though I suppose anything could happen.”

“What if we get a case of, I don’t know, a malicious tooter, but he really just needs extra strength Beano?”

“If that ever happens, I’ll concentrate really hard on his…products.”

Foggy snorted and tapped Matt’s boot with his shoe.

“I’ll stop interrupting any second now,” he said. “Go on, for real.”

“Yes, of course I can hear the farts,” Matt said. “In public, sometimes I can tell who dealt it, sometimes not depending how dense the crowd is. But there are also vibrations. Not intense, just…kind of like fluttering. If I’m really close to whoever did it, I mean proximally, I can sometimes feel the humidity rise. Now if it’s someone I’m around all the time, I can start to know whose farts are whose based on sound quality, or even smell. I can usually anticipate when one’s coming. There’s this one guy—” 

“Oh God,” Foggy said, eye going big. “People in court. Classmates. Roommates. Coworkers. _BFFs_.” Foggy wanted to cover his face. Matt, instead of looking apologetic, which of course he would do just because he loved to act responsible for stuff that wasn’t his fault, grinned so big Foggy thought _he_ might go blind.

“I mean, I was gonna start with the tenant in the apartment under mine who specifically likes to let them out on the floor so it’ll make this huge clapping sound, but you wanna go there right away, be my guest.” 

Foggy shielded his eyes and made himself small in his seat. 

“Please kill me,” he said. 

“I’m telling you, it’s not that bad.”

“I don’t do it much!”

“No, you and Karen both usually go to the bathroom, where all things butt-related are sacrosanct.”

“But sometimes.” If he could be quiet. He had his own office! That’s what offices were _for_.

“Well, you’re human.”

“Please tell me you do it too.”

Matt gentled his smile. 

“Yeah, buddy,” he said. “Like I said, it’s kind of a necessary bodily function.”

“I’m never having burritos again,” Foggy said. “Or Indian food. Oh shit Matt, I love Indian food!”

“Fog, seriously, I’m not telling you this to embarrass you or get you to change what you do day to day. Farts are really low on the list of things that make my life difficult.” Matt waved a hand between them. “And what do you care? You used to Dutch oven me.”

“When I was but a callow, unfeeling youth!” Foggy said. “Not now, when I’m a grown-ass sophisticated man who knows every stank in close quarters might as well be a blanket over my best friend’s head!”

Matt’s laugh this time was a low chuckle that rumbled right through Foggy’s chest. Luckily he was too mortified to come over all horny about it.

“We haven’t even gotten to the stank yet.”

Foggy slapped his own forehead and sat up straight, shoulders square. He put his hands on his knees.

“All right, Murdock, lay it on me. I’m ready.”

“Well…you know how smell and taste are kind of the same?”

“No! No, Matt, no!”

“Yes.”

“It’s taking everything in me not to sink to the floor, rending my clothing in grief right now.”

Matt sat back, looking serene as hell for a guy who just told Foggy he could _taste every fart in a two-block radius_. “Like I said, I think about it differently.”

“All right, sensei,” Foggy said. “Teach me the ways of accepting the reality of ubiquitous gas.”

“’There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,’” Matt said.

Foggy stared at him.

“I straight up don’t believe that Twig guy read you a bunch of Shakespeare.”

“Well, no.”

“So what, smells are a social construct? We’re all just slaves to cultural conditioning?”

Matt raised one shoulder and dropped it in that uneven little shrug he had.

“Look at the ethnic neighborhoods,” Matt said. “You’ve got your Polish and your Ethiopian, your Vietnamese and your Jewish, your Puerto Rican and your Greek and on and on, everything you can think of. And you might walk through some of these neighborhoods and like some things you smell and not others — and they do too. I guarantee you, every group in this city thinks every other group ‘smells bad.’”

“Right.”

“So, when you’re like me, you must be a man without a country, see what I’m saying?”

“So, it’s all equally strong to you, and you try not to be racist about it.”

Matt shifted and leaned back in.

“I guess I’m not explaining myself right,” he said. “Maybe think less _West Side Story_ and more _Lady and the Tramp_.”

“What?”

“Dogs, Foggy,” Matt said. “They’re happy to sniff poop all day because you can’t sit there and tell them poop is disgusting. Or you could, but they wouldn’t care. ‘Disgusting’ is a wholly human concept that doesn’t apply to dogs. They’re just trying to know the world, get information, understand who they share this space with, and their best bet is their nose, so good or bad doesn’t register to them. It’s beside the point. Each thread of the smell is data, and to a certain extent, _knowing_ is more important than drawing a line between what’s good and what’s bad. And knowing is its own pleasure.” 

From his vantage, Foggy could see over Matt’s glasses. His eyes were a clear, lighted hazel which looked up, beseeching, in Foggy’s direction. They got him now. They got him every time. 

“I gotcha,” Foggy said, nodding. “You trained yourself to discern smells by different criteria than whether or not they were actually nice in your nose. Probably so you wouldn’t puke just walking down the street on garbage day.”

Matt beamed at him and clapped both hands on Foggy’s shoulders before dropping them back into his lap.

“Yes!” he said. “That’s exactly it.”

“Smells tell you valuable things,” Foggy said, “and you don’t get to choose which smells you breathe in, so you have to embrace the good with the bad, as we lay-noses might say. And you have embraced that lodestone of the human condition: the fart.”

Matt laughed. Foggy’s heart flipped. The sky was blue.

“You know?” Matt said. “I guess I have.”

“You have smells you like and dislike, though,” Foggy said. “I’ve seen you make that one face when you pass someone who swam in cheap cologne.” Foggy pinched up his expression into what he assumed was a perfect imitation of Matt’s stank face, but Matt gave no indication of having noticed.

“Sure,” he said. “But I can’t sweat the less pleasant stuff too much; I’d never get anything else done.”

“I guess either end of the spectrum would be easy to get pretty lost in.”

“It can be overwhelming, yeah,” Matt said. “Any of my senses could be, if I don’t keep disciplined about compartmentalization and prioritization and discernment and all that stuff.”

“Okay, well, from now on, I’ll endeavor to make the office less ripe with weird microwave meals and my special _eau d’ass_.”

“Fog, I have no complaints about the office,” Matt said. “Either any food or—” He cleared his throat. “—or any asses that may or may not allegedly occupy the space.”

Foggy grinned.

“I’m still gonna cut my Indian consumption down to once a week,” he said. “Okay, maybe twice, I am not a strong man.”

Matt leaned in again and Foggy followed suit.

“Just between you and me,” Matt said, low, “if I _were_ to assign values to farts…”

“Oh my God.”

“…the Indian ones are really not that bad.”

Foggy cuffed Matt on the shoulder and laughed.

“You asked for it, buddy,” he said. “Indian anytime I want it, which is _always_.”

Matt was smiling at him, big-eyed and guileless.

“Whatever makes you happy, Fog,” he said.

—

About halfway through Foggy’s undergraduate education, his parents sold the store to his oldest sister, packed up, and moved out of Hell’s Kitchen. He was their last baby, as his mother was fond of calling him, and they were finally in a financial situation that would allow them their own house instead of a cramped rent-controlled apartment. They’d gotten a place in New Paltz, cozy and comfortable with a little yard his mom used for her garden and enough room for each of their children to have their own space come the holidays. His dad had opened a new store that was thriving, and even as he sailed past retirement age, he had no intentions of packing it in. Which he always told them when he picked them up at the train station in Poughkeepsie.

“They’ll have to pry the key out of my cold, dead hands,” he said as he took Matt’s duffle off him. “Matthew! Imagine a key in my hand. And a hammer. And maybe some pliers.”

“Believe me, I am, Mr. Nelson,” Matt said. Foggy tried to exchange a rolly-eyed look with him, but he wasn’t sure that was actually in Matt’s repertoire. He’d have to ask later.

“How many times have I told you to call me Bill?”

“At least eight thousand,” Matt said. 

“And Brenda?”

“Oh, I’ve lost count.”

“When are you gonna take us up on it?”

“Any day now, Mr. Nelson,” Matt said. 

“Welp,” Dad said with an extra manly slap to Matt’s back, “I wait with bated breath. Get in, son.”

Matt got shotgun, because he always did. It was half an hour’s drive to their house from the station, and they would pass over the Hudson and go through some nice hills, and Foggy and his dad would spend the drive taking turns describing the scenery to Matt.

He appreciated it, Foggy thought. Even with all his fancy chemical spill senses, Matt liked Foggy and his dad taking the time to paint him a word picture. 

Foggy was sure of it.

—

Foggy could always count on his mom to push him out of the way to get to Matt first.

“Matthew!” she shouted. Foggy took an elbow to the ribs in her haste to get over to them. He gasped for breath as he watched Matt beam and open his arms. “You look more handsome every time I see you!”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Mrs. Nelson,” Matt said, only a little strangled. Foggy dumped his bag and patted both hands on his mom’s shoulders.

“C’mon, c’mon, let the man breathe, Ma,” he said. “And what am I, chopped liver?”

“Oh, my baby, so jealous I love his partner more than him,” she said, lobbing a wink in his direction.

“She’s still bitter she can’t buy actual chopped liver at a discount from you, obviously,” Matt said.

“You have certain dreams for your children,” Foggy’s dad said, crossing the threshold into the house with Matt’s duffle. “And when your only son comes to you and says, ‘Dad, I want to be a lawyer,’ of course you’re a little disappointed.”

“But in the end, you just want him to be happy,” Mom said. She turned from Matt’s arms straight into Foggy’s and she hugged him tight. Foggy watched Matt grinning at them from over her shoulder. 

“So you have to accept him for who he is,” Dad said. “And adjust your dreams a little.”

“Thanks, guys,” Foggy said, releasing his mom. “You’re real supportive.” 

Mom took the opportunity to press all ten of her fingertips into Foggy’s cheeks in a rhythmic pinch.

“Still my baby,” she said. 

“ _Ma!_ ”

“And he squeals just the same as he ever did!”

“I’m putting your bag down in the basement, Matt,” Dad said, moving around the spectacle. 

“Wait, what?” Foggy said. He batted his mom’s hands away as gently as he could and adjusted his own bag on his shoulder. Matt turned towards where Dad was moving, and in doing so, took Foggy’s elbow gently. 

“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Mom said. She stood behind them and clapped a hand on their backs. “We’re doing a few renovations to your room, so the two of you are down in the basement this time around. Don’t worry, I made it cozy in there.”

‘Cozy’ wasn’t really the problem. The basement was a nice little den with its own toilet and fridge, but the main event was only big enough for a flatscreen mounted on the wall before a couch. It was hard to see how his parents could have fit the pair of twin beds from Foggy’s room into the space they had down there.

Foggy went to follow his dad through the house and down the stairs, but his mother squeezed the back of his neck and held him in place.

“Give him a sec,” she said, voice low. Foggy could feel Matt still against him. They waited for the shuffle-stomp of Dad trundling down the stairs, and then Mom let Foggy’s neck go and patted both their backs to encourage them to face her. “Listen, I sent the girls out for a beer run so I could talk to you for a second without the constant dull roar.”

“Ma? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” she said. “Nothing, baby. Just — this is silly, don’t you think? After, what, twelve years?”

“Mrs. Nelson?” Matt said. Foggy glanced at him and found him tilting his head at her, lips pursed, brow dimpled. 

“Brenda, Matt, please,” she said. “Someday, I’m gonna wear you down.”

“Ma, seriously, what are you talking about?” Foggy said. “You’re making me nervous.”

His mother sighed and stepped away from them, her hands dropping to her sides before she crossed them in front of her chest. She smiled at Matt before turning to Foggy and sending him a patented _what am I gonna do with you?_ look.

“I’m talking about you boys,” she said. “Have your father or I ever done anything to make you feel like you couldn’t tell us about yourself, baby? We’ve done everything — everything! — to make Matt feel welcome, and to show you both that we love and cherish you no matter what. We _do_ accept you, you know. I hate that word, though. It makes it seem like some kind of journey or choice, but it wasn’t. We’ve always loved you, Fog, just as you are. And when you brought Matt home, well. It was exactly the same.”

Foggy wondered if his eyes had ever been so big. His mom, short and blonde and heavyset and formidable, was peering up at him with a determined look on her face that recalled nothing so much as Matt, about to kill it in front of a jury. One glimpse at Matt showed him a pair of eyebrows clear off his head and a hilarious gaping fish mouth.

“Um, Ma?”

“Don’t, baby,” she said. “It hurts your dad’s feelings, you know, that you didn’t think you could tell us.”

“Mrs. Nelson, we never meant to hurt anyone,” Matt said. Foggy took a sharp inward breath and tried to shake his head minutely enough that his mom wouldn’t notice with her attention on Matt, but Matt plowed through. “We’re sorry.” 

Foggy’s own jaw snapped shut and he swallowed. His heart was threatening to jackrabbit right out of his mouth, didn’t Matt _get_ that?

Mom rubbed her hand over Matt’s shoulders.

“I know, honey,” she said. “It must have been hard, growing up Catholic and having these feelings.”

“It was…an experience.”

“And you’re so damned _kind_ , never a complaint out of you.” She sighed again. “I’m glad you’ve let yourself have our Foggy, after everything you’ve been through. You deserve to be happy, Matthew.”

And damn him, Matt smiled at her, a tremulous, beautiful thing while Foggy was powerless to stop any of the madness. If Matt said something sappy right now, something horrible like _Foggy makes it all worth it, Mrs. Nelson_ , Foggy would not survive. He was not equipped to deal with a lie of that magnitude, not when it was the thing he most wanted in the world and was never, ever, _ever_ going to get. He could feel it coming, too, like an itch deep beneath his skin: Matt’s willingness to martyr himself to save someone else’s face. He seized Matt’s elbow again and pulled him toward the basement.

“Thanks for being so understanding, Ma,” he said. “We’re a little tired from the ride up, so if you don’t mind…?”

Mom stepped back into the kitchen, waving them off.

“Go, go,” she said. “Relax while you can still hear your own thoughts.” 

“Thanks, Ma,” Foggy said. “Just…thanks.”

She smiled again, and Foggy wished she didn’t look just a little sad doing it. He stole a glance at Matt, whose brows had knit together in concern, and he shook his head. If he dragged Matt toward the basement at a pace that was not strictly blind-guy friendly, well, who would know? Matt didn’t protest, and he kept up.

—

“What the hell was that?” was what Foggy was _absolutely_ about to hiss in Matt’s ear when they got into the basement, but the words dried up in his throat when he was confronted with the very real, very lonely full-sized bed occupying the room. The couch was nowhere to be seen.

“Um,” is all he said. 

“Is that — is that just one bed?” Matt said.

“Can’t you tell with your awesome super powers?”

“Mostly, from the sound, but I’d have to touch it to be sure.”

“Well, yes, congratulations, Matt, your super powers are right this time.” Foggy dropped his bag to the floor and kicked it next to Matt’s. “One bed and it’s all ours, joy of joys.”

“You’re mad at me,” Matt said.

“Oh, did your superpowers tell you that too?”

“It’s not my fault your family thinks we’re a couple,” Matt said. “What did you want to do, embarrass everyone?”

“Jesus, Matt!” Foggy threw his hands into the air. “It’s not like there were only two options: go along with their frankly preposterous misconception or humiliate them so thoroughly they’d diminish into the West forever!”

“Fog, you couldn’t hear — you don’t know how much courage it took for her to say it, and how sincerely she meant…all of those things. There was no letting her down easy, do you get that?”

Foggy tried not to grind his teeth together. He sighed and threw himself backward onto the bed, feet dangling off. He toed his shoes off.

“We’ll just…” Matt shrugged. “We’ll give it a few months, tell her we broke it off amicably, and then it’ll be back to twin beds next year.”

Foggy snorted and shook his head.

“It’ll be that easy, huh?” he said. “Come on, Matt. She thinks we’ve been together since we were _eighteen_. You think any relationship like that dissolves with no drama and then all parties involved can just, what, spend the holidays together like it’s no big thing?”

Matt did the blind equivalent of staring at him. Foggy was at a weird vantage, lying down like he was while Matt loomed over him, worrying at the handle of his cane. Mostly what Foggy got was a stubble-rough, square-cut jaw jutting out at a brave-little-orphan angle.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Matt said, voice gone rough. “Basically.”

Foggy sat up. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and scowled up at Matt Murdock, professional martyr.

“You don’t get to pull that shit with me, Matt,” he said. “You don’t get to act the innocent victim to my cartoon villain. I have no curly mustache and you—” _have too much blood on your hands_ , Foggy swallowed back. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, eyes closed. When he opened them again, he modulated his tone to be careful and measured. “I’m _trying_ , Matt. But it’s kind of hard to forget what getting your heart ripped out feels like. Especially when—” He snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

“Especially when what?” Matt said. He straightened his back, and Foggy took another fortifying breath.

“Especially when I know damn well you would never, ever have told me if I hadn’t found you half dead in your apartment, and that makes me feel like — like we’ve never been friends and anything that passed between us was an elaborate ruse for your cover and everything about me is an open book to you, even the shit I’ve tried to hold back, and that’s worse than humiliating, Murdock, it’s — it’s _scalding_ and I feel _flayed_ every moment of every day and I don’t know how to get better from that.” His heart was beating and his breath was coming quick and he didn’t care even a little bit. “But I’m trying _so hard_ … and I’m just not sure you are.”

He chanced a look upward and caught Matt’s Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat. His mouth trembled.

“May I sit?” He swept a hand out at the space next to Foggy, his voice gravelly. Foggy nodded and scooted over. The bed dipped with Matt’s weight. “I don’t know how to explain myself without sounding like I’ve got a pocketful of excuses you’ve already heard.”

“Seriously,” Foggy said, “please spare me the umpteenth iteration of _I didn’t want to get you involved_.”

“I know,” Matt said. “But it’s all I’ve got, and I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth.”

Foggy cast his gaze up to the ceiling. He could feel the heat of Matt’s body even from five inches away. He wondered if it was the fresh bullshit he was trying to sell.

“You know what your problem is, Matt?”

“I mean, do you want a list, or…”

“Your _problem_ , Matty, is that even when you had a dad, you learned that the only person you can rely on is yourself. You got that confirmed when he left you all alone, and when you were with Stick, and then in foster care. But that doesn’t work when you get close to people, because your life, your wellbeing, isn’t the only one on the line anymore.” Foggy rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants. “I thought… I thought all our time together meant you knew you could trust me, and lean on me, and come to me if there was anything you needed. People need other people, Matt, it’s like a scientific fact.”

“Fog—”

“No, listen, Matty, please?”

Another swallow, a minute nod. Foggy steadied himself with a slow exhale.

“I’ve always needed you,” Foggy said. “I’m not shy about it. That’s what being best friends is about. But you missed the memo. The fact is, you needed me, but because you couldn’t admit it to your own damn self, you could have died, you could have landed me and Karen and Claire and Brett and Brett’s mom and my whole family who loves you — you could have landed us all in jail or the bottom of the river or strung up on some mobster’s flagpole. And the worst thing about any of this, Matt, worse than the betrayal and the lies and the could-have-beens, is that you’re not sorry you lied, man. You’re sorry I caught you out. You’re _sorry_ you’re not still _flying under my radar_ and you tell yourself it’s for my own good when it’s really that misplaced sense of self-preservation keeping you from being close to anyone in any meaningful way.” All his breath left him in a rush, and he gasped, clenching his fists in his pants. “Jesus, Matt. How can we come back from that? How can — how can I look at my life, which I’ve frigging _built around you exactly the way my mother thinks I have_ and not just see ruins? How is any of this salvageable when you’ve never really been my friend?” 

“Foggy, Fog— you’re hyperventilating, listen, listen to me.” Matt’s voice was urgent, and Foggy was trying his damnedest not cry. “Listen, I’m gonna hug you now. Okay? I’m putting my arms around you.” And he did, going slow, telegraphing his movements so Foggy could opt out.

Foggy didn’t opt out.

Matt was warm and solid and he smelled good. Foggy wasn’t too proud to admit he melted a little, but he was a sucker for hugs and there was no shame in that. He wrapped his arms around Matt’s middle, tucked his nose into his neck, and held on tight.

“I don’t know what to say to make this better,” Matt said. “You’re mad no matter what I say, and I get that Fog, I really do, but what are we doing if you’re never gonna give me a chance? Your mind’s made up, so where does that leave me?”

Foggy felt that in his gut. His breath shuddered out of him. He pulled out of Matt’s arms.

“I’m not trying to be like that,” he said. “Maybe we should talk about farts again, that was cool and easy and not at all like getting a knife between the ribs.”

A bark of a laugh tumbled out of Matt’s mouth. He set one hand on the back of Foggy’s neck.

“You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever been able to tell that stuff to.”

Foggy turned enough to be able to look at him. Same old Matt he’d been looking at every day for more than a decade. Same floofy hair, maybe a strand of silver threaded through here and there. A few more lines on his forehead, around his eyes. Better facial hair game. Foggy’s heart broke over it all for about the zillionth time.

“Tell me how you can hear a mattress,” Foggy said. 

Matt tilted his head. The tip of his tongue darted out to wet his lips.

“It’s — it’s how other sounds bounce off it,” he said. “You can tell it’s a flat plane, and you can tell how big it is by how everything else is interacting with it. The TV upstairs. Your mom banging around the kitchen. The way the house creaks when someone walks around. Your breath. Your voice. Your stomach sounds.”

“You can hear my _stomach sounds?_ ”

“Yeah, I like them.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. He shrugged and remained a little hunched over, an extra-small baby bird. “I like all your sounds.”

Foggy had to laugh. 

“God, but we are a pair.”

Matt’s shoulders relaxed a little.

“Yeah,” he said.

“So how can you tell it’s a mattress and not like a table?” Foggy said. 

Matt shifted, stretching his legs out before him.

“It absorbs the sounds a bit, so everything’s a little muffled,” he said. “If it were wood or something hard like that, the sounds would bounce back again. And usually tables have other solid things on them, like books or vases or plates, so the sounds fragment and disperse around them. Most of the time, beds have rumpled up blankets and pillows and more soft things, so sound gets caught up in them instead of splintering. It’s… softer. With a bed.”

Foggy swallowed and looked away. 

“How can you stand it?” he said. “On top of all the noise of the world, you have to hear everyone’s smallest bodily secrets? If my heart gives everything away, and my stomach and my freaking _farts_ — how can you stand hearing it from everyone, all the time?” _People crying,_ Foggy thought. _People fighting, people masturbating, people having inane conversations. It must get hard to think._

“I set up filters,” Matt said, “a long time ago. For every thing, every sense. I have to suss out what — _who_ — is important enough to let in.”

“And you have a Foggy filter?”

“Yeah, bud,” he said. “You’re #1 for sound, smell, taste and touch.”

“Oh.”

“I do trust you, Foggy,” Matt said. “I do rely on you.” 

“And my stomach sounds.”

Matt tilted his head towards Foggy’s belly. Foggy wondered if he should suck it in or something. Would that skew the results? Matt probably knew everything about Foggy sucking in his gut. God, he was ridiculous for sucking in his gut around a guy who couldn’t see said gut and damn well knew it was there anyway due to having a severe case of super powers. 

“You had an omelette this morning, sausage, spinach, American,” Matt said. “It came with hash browns and toast, both a little burnt, but the timing of the train made it so you weren’t really hungry for lunch and now it’s too late to get one before dinner. You’re still digesting but you’re also starting to get hungry.”

“You can tell what I ate by how it sounds _digesting?_ ”

“Ha, well, no. That was smell.”

“Good.” Foggy paused. “What does digestion sound like?”

“Hmm, fizzy? Like, a million tiny soda cans being popped inside you.”

“Oh my God.”

“That’s where gas comes from,” Matt said, a little too delighted. “Some foods make the soda cans bigger.”

“Thanks, Matt, I couldn’t put that together myself.”

Matt laughed.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You need to work on what trust and reliance actually _are_ ,” Foggy said. “As like, concepts.”

Matt sobered, mouth going flat.

“I know,” he said. “I am.”

“And I’ll work on letting your issues be your issues without trying to make you have the reactions I want you to have.”

“This is awesomely emotionally mature of us,” Matt said.

“Mostly me,” Foggy said.

“Quit while you’re ahead, Fog.”

Foggy smiled, and it didn’t even hurt that much. He slapped Matt on the back. 

“Okay, so can you like, discreetly tell me when my sisters are talking shit about me? I want to have the upper hand.”

“That’s so far out of your reach you’ll never have it even if you use me to cheat.”

“First of all, how dare you.”

“Also no way am I getting on Lindsey’s shit list, are you kidding me?”

“Do not even tell me frigging _Daredevil_ is afraid of Lindsey Nelson.”

Matt spluttered, but he tried to pass it off as a scoff. Foggy was not fooled.

“Lindsey Nelson,” Matt said, voice raised, “the child scourge of Manhattan team sports? You’re damn right I’m scared of the girl who once tore a softball apart with her teeth and made the kid she was sitting on eat it; I’m a blind indoor kid who wants to keep his nuts.”

Foggy reeled back as if slapped.

“I just lost so much respect for you, Murdock, you don’t even know. I am gaping at you in a churning miasma of shock and disappointment right now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Matt stood and poked Foggy in the shin with his cane. “With your shield or on it, pal. The girls are home.” 

Foggy was on his feet in a fraction of a second, hiking his jeans up his hips.

“Oh shit, quick, are we really doing this fake boyfriends thing?” he asked.

“If we give it up now, Lindsey and Erin will spend the rest of your life giving you shit about breaking your parents’ hearts,” Matt said. “Time to commit.”

A great thunder rolled above their heads.

“Oh Christ,” Foggy said. “Jesus Christ.”

A herd of elephants stampeded down the basement stairs and suddenly Foggy was on his back on the bed being smothered by the 200 pounds of solid muscle he called his middle sister. 

“ _Urrrfffff_ ,” he said, or something like that.

“Jesus, Linds, if you smother him to death we can’t harass him about Matt,” came Erin’s voice. “How the hell are ya, Matt?”

“Living the dream, Erin, how are you?” Matt said.

“Just spending night and day torturing myself wondering why you settled for this chump.” 

Lindsey dragged Foggy up in time for him to see Erin poke a thumb in his direction. He gasped for air.

“Oh, you know.” That bashful shrug and smile. “Always knew he was the one for me.”

“Holy shit, we unleashed a monster,” Lindsey said. “They’re gonna be all gross at each other now — worse than before!” She pushed Foggy toward a storage closet. “Quick! Get back in!”

Foggy slapped her hands away and flicked her earlobe.

“What’s it like to be devoid of human feeling?” he said.

“Freeing,” Lindsey said. She pushed him to the side and enveloped Matt in a hug hard enough to crush the breath from his lungs. He may have squeaked. “You want me to threaten Froggy for you? I can offer a complimentary leg amputation if he ever breaks your heart.”

“That’s all right, Linds,” Matt said. “But thanks.”

“Seriously, guys,” Erin said, clapping Foggy on the shoulder. “Huge weight off my mind. Mom was blackmailing us into never saying anything to you directly, but I thought I might break a rib keeping it in for the twelfth year in a row.”

“Um,” Foggy said. 

“What Frog-lips here means with that stunning display of articulacy is that he’s grateful you’re even here, Matt, please never leave him,” Lindsey said. Then she leaned in and stage whispered, “But feel free to cheat, he has no self-respect.” She followed up with a truly vile wink. 

“You know he can’t see you do that,” Foggy said.

“He gets it from my tone,” Lindsey said, bouncing her nonexistent eyebrows.

“Hands off my baby duck.” 

“So!” Erin said. “When are you putting a ring on this shit to lock it down, Fog?”

“That’s a conversation we haven’t had time for, what with getting the firm off the ground,” Matt said. He slid his arm into Foggy’s and nodded toward the stairs. “Shall we? I’m starved.”

“One word to Mom and she’ll be stuffing your face,” Lindsey said.

“She already thinks you’re wasting away and it’s all Foggy’s fault,” Erin said. 

“Ugh, of course it is,” Foggy said. “Like I make him eat kale and quinoa.” He shuddered theatrically.

“You think these abs cut themselves?” Matt said, nudging Foggy’s side with an elbow. Foggy caught the smirk and went a little red.

“Gross!” Lindsey said. “Keep it up, I love it. I wish Grandma were alive so you could make out in front of her and kill her all over again.”

Grandma _may_ have been a hateful bitch with no love in her heart, and Foggy _may_ have given her a fatal myocardial infarction by telling her he voted for Obama. Some mysteries were not meant to be solved. 

“Fuck, I didn’t even think to ask,” Foggy said. “Are the Uncle Kennys coming? Are they gonna shove a tract up my ass and try to exorcise me?”

“No, dude, didn’t Mom tell you?” Erin said. “She had this whole plan to force your dumb ass out of the closet in as stress-free a manner as possible, so this year is nuclear family only.”

“No shit!”

“No Ken, no Mary, no Bobert, Anne-Marie, Susie _or_ Don-Don, and no Carter, Campbell, Kyle, Taylor, Roz, Shiloh, Laurie, Bailey or Kendall, either.”

“Shit,” Foggy said. “I can’t decide if I’m relieved or just preemptively bored.”

Erin shrugged.

“Let’s settle on savoring the relative quiet.”

Lindsey darted past them, knocking Foggy into Matt and taking the stairs two at a time. 

“Fuck off, nerds,” she said. “Last one up gets a potato to the ear!”

Foggy sighed and shook his head. 

“Of course she’s a gym teacher,” he said. “It was probably written in the stars at the beginning of time: Lindsey Nelson, sent from hell to torment the children of New York.”

“I’ll add them to my nightly prayers,” Matt said, sending Foggy a grin. Foggy snorted and bumped Matt’s shoulder with his own. 

“Ugh,” Erin said. “You two make me believe in love again. You gotta cool it or I’ll start barfing rainbows.”

“I’d pay to see that,” Foggy said.

“Don’t say ‘see,’ your boyfriend’s blind.”

“You’re such an ass.”

“It’s fucking good to see you, baby brother.”

Foggy beamed at her. Erin was seven years older than him and imminently practical. She was stout and sturdy, plain-faced with the trademark Nelson dishwater blonde hair tumbling shapeless over her ears. Love had been unkind to her. Foggy wondered if he was being unkind to her right now, but with Matt’s arm linked in his, the lie he was perpetrating felt more and more like something real he had instead of just a wish in his heart. And he led Matt around all the time. They had always been more than a little tactile with each other. Foggy wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary; it wasn’t his fault her interpretation had led her astray.

“You don’t have to be such a stranger, you know,” he told her. “We’re both in the city. Hell, we’re in the same ten blocks we grew up in.”

“That goes both ways, Frog face,” Erin said. She sighed and waved a hand between them. “We own our own businesses, kid. We both know how it is. Come on.” She started up the stairs. “If Matt’s last, Lindsey won’t make good on her threats.”

Foggy glanced at Matt, who gave him a little smile for his troubles, and they climbed out of the basement after her.

—

Dad was staring at Matt over the red potatoes with a sappy look on his face while Mom asked Foggy the millionth question about their “relationship.”

“I’ve always wanted to know,” she said, “why the two of you stopped living together when you graduated. Wouldn’t it be cheaper? I’ve heard the rent is too damn high.”

“Christ, Ma,” Lindsey said, “I guess we should be glad your jokes are only six years out of date instead of thirty.”

“Where’s the beef?”

“Can we talk about something else?” Foggy said. “Like, _anything_.” He hunched over his plate and stuffed his face full of roast.

“We were trying to be less, um, codependent,” Matt said. Foggy kicked him underneath the table, but he only pressed his thigh against Foggy’s, as if that somehow explained what the hell he was doing. “We wanted to make sure we were together because we wanted to be, not because it’s familiar and we don’t know how to be apart.”

Foggy stared at him. Matt squeezed his knee under the table. 

“That’s nice, _Oprah_ ,” Lindsey said.

 _Seriously_ , Foggy whispered, mostly air, but by the quirk in the corner of Matt’s mouth, he knew he heard it.

“We’ve all seen those couples who are together out of habit, who burned down every last shred of affection they once had for one another,” Matt went on, facing no one but Foggy now. Foggy felt caught in the tractor beam of Matt’s attention. He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I never wanted us to be that way. I’m trying to make sure we never are.”

Across from Foggy, Erin stabbed a potato rather viciously. Foggy dragged his attention away from Matt back to his plate.

“That makes sense, Matt,” Mom said. “I hope this doesn’t mean you’ve been having problems, though.”

“Every couple has its problems, Ma,” Foggy said. “Erin, how’s the store?”

“We’re fine, Mrs. Nelson,” Matt said. “And when we’re not, we work on it.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Ma said. “It feels like most couples these days just throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.”

Erin cleared her throat.

“I’m in the middle of switching the store to a new computer system,” she said loudly. “Still got a few glitches to iron out.”

“God that’s riveting,” Lindsey said. “I got so excited I almost threw up.”

“Make any children cry this week, Lindsey?” Foggy said. “Devour the hearts of any wayward men?”

“That’s enough,” Dad said. “What was wrong with the old system, Erin?”

“It was just outdated, Dad,” she said. “It didn’t work with a lot of new programs, its receipt system was all messed up, it had no way to integrate credit card chips. The new system will also be able to be updated as technology moves forward instead of being a dinosaur right out of the gate — if I can get the damn thing to start without crashing my entire network.”

“You gotta go analog, baby, I’m telling you,” Dad said.

“That’s some cute schtick when you’re a seventy year old man,” Erin said.

“Excuse me, I am sixty-eight.”

“Here’s what you do,” Lindsey said. “You hire some kid like ten years old, the kind who never lived in a world without the internet. Bam! That kid’ll have you in business in under an hour, and all you have to do is bribe ’em with a video game Mommy doesn’t want ’em to have.”

“You sell hardware,” Dad said. “What do you need with a fancy computer system anyway?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Erin said. “Keeping an inventory that’s not a mess, making invoices that actually look professional, using real accounting software to make sure I’m not in the red when tax season comes around, small potato stuff.”

“All right, children.” Mom glared at Dad, who slouched sullenly over his plate. “Our renovation’s coming along really nice, isn’t it Bill?”

“A couple more weeks and it’ll be tip top,” he said. 

“What are you doing in there, anyway?” Foggy asked. 

“What, you don’t like your basement love nest?” Lindsey said. “I left you a present in the bedside table.”

Foggy flung a hand out against Matt’s chest as if he were stopping him from stepping in front of a bus. Matt grunted.

“Matt, don’t open it in case it’s some kind of stink bomb,” Foggy said. “Wait for me to disable it.”

“I do remember the events of junior year, Foggy,” Matt said. “Lesson learned.”

“You think so little of me, Froggy?” Lindsey said. “I’m hurt. This hurts me. I sought only to give you a thoughtful gift for this, your society debut.”

“We’re converting the big wall into a built-in bookshelf, Fog,” Dad said. “We’re finally gonna make it into a study like we’ve been talking about.”

“For ten years,” Mom said under her breath. 

“Eight,” Dad said, eyes twinkling.

“How’s work been for you, Lindsey?” Matt asked. He pierced an asparagus spear with his fork and fed it to himself in a dainty, incongruous gesture.

“Thanks for asking, Matthew,” Lindsey said. “This is why you’re the only one I haven’t disowned.”

“That means a lot to me.”

Lindsey made that weird honking nose she probably got patented when she was twelve. She took a swig of her wine before stuffing her face with a mish mash of roast and potatoes, and then she spoke with her mouth full.

“You know, same old,” she said. “Hustling for funding. I want gym mats that aren’t older than Sputnik and chock full of tuberculosis. I want showers that don’t spit freezing-ass sulphur out onto my kids. I want vegetables that aren’t from a can in the cafeteria. But for a society dead set on making damn sure everyone feels bad about not being little stick figures, we sure are hostile to any attempt by those who lead a life of public service to make sure we aren’t raising a nation of fat kids.” Here, she nodded at Foggy. He swung his foot out and kicked her good. She smirked at him, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her eyes were tired. “No money for me or the hippies in the art department. No money for instruments or more than one music teacher per thousand kids. Cut out those advanced placement science classes. Gotta get new stadium lights for the football field. Gotta put another soda machine in the lounge. Gotta pay for the principal’s Beemer.” A laugh like a scoff. “You wonder every day if you made the right choice. But then you get to watch one middle schooler bean another in the face with a dodgeball and it makes it all worth it.”

“You’re a real humanitarian, Linds,” Foggy said. 

She poked her fork at him, eyebrows raised.

“You know what I could use?” she said. “Some of that Hell’s Kitchen flippity do da shit.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Daredevil!” Lindsey said, and Foggy almost threw his heart up right onto his plate. Matt began to cough and Foggy rubbed his back, gentle but firm because he knew Matt didn’t like when people thumped him, masochistic Daredevilling tendencies aside. “Did you see what he did to that racketeering motherfucker? I’m telling you, the school system’s totally corrupt straight to the top, it’s right up his alley. You think he’d come to Staten Island if I sent him some nudes?” 

“Lord but we did raise a potty-mouth, Bill,” Mom said.

“Three of ’em,” Dad said brightly.

“Um, I don’t know where you’d find a mailing address for that guy,” Foggy said. “I bet he doesn’t even have a PO Box.” He laughed, too loud and grating. “Who would you address it to? ‘Mr Daredevil Sir.’ Ha ha! Ha!” 

“He’s pretty hot in that bondage gear though, don’t you think?”

Foggy knew he was turning a dull, splotchy red and so, frankly, was his half-choking law partner, but there was nothing he could do about either.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he said, voice strangled. 

“Oh please, like you don’t have a type.”

“So you don’t actually need his help, you just wanna perv on him?”

“Why not both?”

“Erin, you and the boys better be safe down there in the old neighborhood,” Dad said. “All this new superhero stuff makes us nervous.”

“We’re fine, Dad,” Erin said. 

“Take a sip of water, Matty,” Mom said. Matt slammed his glass of water back with loud gulps.

“It’s all very weird, though,” Dad said. “All of the sudden there’s aliens and super people — we just don’t know how to feel about it.”

“Or how we feel about our babies living in vigilante ground zero,” Mom said. “If any of you wanted to move to sunny New Paltz, New York, you know we’d help you out.”

“The streets weren’t any safer before,” Matt said. He cleared the frog from his throat. “We only think they were because of nostalgia and the fact that the internet gives us news every second of every day now, and usually only half the story sensationalized, at that. The city — it’s always been full of dangerous elements. Personally, I feel a little better about the fact that there are people out there openly protecting us.”

“Isn’t that what the police are for?” Erin said, and then laughed. Everyone began to laugh, loud and raucous, and Foggy glanced at Matt. Matt was so beautiful, happy like this, and Foggy was damned if it didn’t hurt just to look at him sometimes. He smiled at him anyway, and Matt turned his face toward him, his own smile softening as if they were the only two people in the room, content and together.

—

Later, when Foggy and Matt were facing the soft expanse of their bed from opposite sides, Foggy asked, “Is everyone asleep?”

Matt cocked his head. 

“Your mom and dad are,” he said. “Lindsey is texting but her breath’s slowing down, and Erin is lying on her back in the dark staring at the ceiling.”

“You can tell she’s in the dark?”

“All lights buzz,” Matt said. 

Foggy paused. Fluorescents must be like torture for Matt.

“She’s always had trouble sleeping,” he said after a moment.

“How’s she doing, do you think?”

“Can’t you tell?” Foggy waved a hand between them. “By listening and smelling and all?”

Matt sighed and tucked his chin inward. Foggy felt guilty, but didn’t know what for.

“Sometimes information’s just information,” he said. “It still needs to be interpreted, and I don’t necessarily have the tools to do that with people I don’t know really well or haven’t studied. I see her once or twice a year, but you know her. You’ve known her your whole life. I assume you also communicate with her privately. That means you know how she is better than I ever could, regardless of how I can assess her heart rate.” 

“Sorry,” Foggy said.

Matt sent him a little smile and a shake of his head.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m — I’m glad I can talk to you about all this. It’s…refreshing.” He took off his shirt and folded it up before dropping it to the floor. He was left in a white cotton tee whose hem he fiddled with before apparently deciding to leave it on. Probably in deference to Foggy’s sanity. He shucked his pants and then there he stood in black boxer briefs. So much for sanity.

Something illogical that was probably Foggy’s inner fat kid compelled him to turn his back to Matt when he took off his own shirt and jeans. Back in the dorms, Foggy had thought nothing of shucking his clothes in front of the blind guy, underwear and all, and Matt, poor little Catholic orphan Matt, only took about a week to follow suit. What was modesty to a man who couldn’t see? Things were different now, of course. Not because of anything Matt did, but because of what Foggy knew.

Call it self-preservation, but Foggy had never let his eyes linger on Matt’s R-rated parts no matter how much he encouraged the lack of shame that had apparently resulted in Matt flipping around the city in something that looked like latex body paint. Old habits had him turning his back as the elastic of Matt’s boxers slipped over the swell of his ass. He swallowed around the dryness in his throat, and he couldn’t help that but at least he wasn’t the creeper who’d watched his best friend undress for years. He sent a little thank you back to Past Foggy for developing the habit before he ever knew Matt was privy to all his secrets. 

Foggy flicked the light off and slid under the covers, settling on his back. The mattress dipped with Matt’s weight when he followed a moment afterward. Matt fidgeted for a second, and then Foggy heard the sound of his glasses being placed on the bedside table.

“I’m not opening the drawer,” he said.

“I’ll put on a hazmat suit and do it tomorrow.”

Foggy listened to Matt breathing for a while. His eyes adjusted to the dark enough for him to look at a single curl of peeling paint on the ceiling.

“They’re really happy for us, you know?” Matt said.

“Yeah well,” Foggy said, chest tight. “You don’t have to lay it on so thick.”

“I’m—” He cut himself off. “I’m not trying to do that.”

“What are you trying to do then?”

A loud exhale. Foggy didn’t dare turn his head to face him.

“I’m just trying to prove I can be your friend again,” Matt said. “And I’m trying to show you that I’m trying, but they’re all there and it makes everything I say and do seem…”

“Gay.”

Matt laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “That.”

“I feel you,” Foggy said. “I keep doing normal things; they’re just the pervs who take it the wrong way.”

Matt was quiet.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with—” Foggy swallowed as if it could somehow contain the flipping of his stomach. “They’re right about me, of course. That I’m bi or queer or whatever. I just wish you hadn’t gotten caught up in this big drama they stirred up about it.”

“We’re a team, Fog,” Matt said. “Even if we’re not the team they think we are. I don’t mind… being caught up.”

Foggy laughed and hoped it didn’t sound too bitter.

“Not many straight guys would be down for this farce,” he said.

“Good thing there aren’t any straight guys in here, then.”

Foggy’s head snapped toward Matt. He lay on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes open and unseeing, looking about as comfortable as those old timey Draculas looked in their coffins. 

“What the fuck, Murdock?” Foggy said. “I’ve only ever seen you with women. Really _hot_ ones.”

Matt shrugged. It bounced the mattress.

“It’s not like you bring everyone you sleep with around to meet your friends,” he said. He swept one hand outward before tucking it back under his other arm. “Hence this conversation.”

“Fine,” Foggy said. “Touché. Moving on.” _You knew about me, though,_ he thought. You had to. It wasn’t that Foggy kept it a secret. Contrary to all his sisters’ little jokes, there was no closet. There had never been a closet. He just didn’t broadcast. It wasn’t on him that heterosexuality was an assumed default. But Matt — Matt must have smelled it on him, and when he never said anything, he must have assumed Foggy wasn’t willing to be open about it. 

He looked back up at the curl on the ceiling. He felt very Erin about it. What kinds of guys did Matt like? Probably the kind that filled out superhero outfits very nicely. Tall and chiseled and shit, busting through their t-shirts, and not at the tum. Whatever traits were mutually exclusive with Foggy Nelson, that’s who Matt Murdock was into, no doubt. It was probably another sensory thing: miles of firm, toned muscle _had_ to be nicer beneath Matt’s super finger tips than soft sag and stretch marks. It was probably like all his ridiculous silk sheets that turned out to be essential to his sanity— and meanwhile Foggy was sandpaper. Christ, Foggy couldn’t even fault him for it. He closed his eyes.

“Tell me about taste this time,” he said. He didn’t think he could handle a touch conversation in his present state. “Do you go around licking things for your database or what?” _Like dicks. Oh my God, Nelson, stop thinking about your best friend licking dicks._ “Or, like, was there something at dinner tonight that you could taste and I couldn’t?”

Matt relaxed a little, his elbow brushing Foggy’s arm. 

“It’s not really like that,” he said. “Even regular people can be super tasters, and I’m not, really. It’s less super charged and more about sensitivity, if that makes sense.”

“I guess I don’t get the difference.”

Matt let out his breath in a hum. 

“Gimme a sec,” he said. Foggy looked over at him, wondering what he was catching off him right now. 

“Do you want me to take a shower while you think?” he said. “Do I smell like a locker room?” 

Matt snorted.

“No, you’re fine.”

“Okay, like ‘pleasant neutral’ fine or ‘gathering data is my idea of a good time’ fine, because now I’ll never know with you.”

“How about this,” Matt said. “If you’re ever really ripe and it’s impacting my day, I’ll let you know.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Only that time Halo 3 came out and you didn’t shower for four days and reached a new low by peeing in a water bottle.”

“Oh my God,” Foggy said. 

“I had to go live in the library so I could think.”

“I don’t even remember.”

“Let’s both try to forget.”

“Hey Matt?”

“Hm.”

“Ever think about being a doctor? I bet you’d be great at it. Sniffing out sicknesses like House, only _literally_.”

“Nah. All those low thread count scrubs.”

“Hedonist.”

Matt’s laugh was like a whisper. Foggy imagined he could feel it on his skin. The sound and the feeling, sparks of electricity all entwined into a single palpable thing, the way Matt experienced the whole world. He wanted to turn on his side the way he usually slept, but it didn’t seem right while Matt was still awake. 

“So… taste,” he said. “Is it as complicated as smell?”

“To be honest, I think smell does most of taste’s heavy lifting,” Matt said. “And smell both travels and lingers. Taste is proximal and immediate, most of the time. It’s probably my least exercised and least… _professionally_ useful sense. Which actually means I can do simple stuff like enjoy food with it more easily, since I don’t have to worry about what everything I’m tasting might mean. Usually.”

“Oh. That’s nice, then.” 

“Super tasters taste dirt on vegetables and can’t eat bitter stuff and can pick out every individual ingredient in any given recipe,” Matt said. “I bet I could if I tried, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point unless I want to stop enjoying my meals because all I taste is, I don’t know, baking soda or something.”

“Super tasting: the crappiest super power.”

“Can you imagine the Wonder Taster?”

“He goes around to restaurants dressed in spandex telling the chef his food tastes like twice-regurgitated cud.”

Matt laughed, his shoulder bumping into Foggy’s as the movement forced them closer. He didn’t seem to care, and Foggy wasn’t about to put more space between them.

“People’d probably hate him more than they hate me,” Matt said.

“Hey,” Foggy said. He flicked his wrist out and smacked Matt’s arm. “People love you.”

Matt swallowed and the moment stretched between them like molasses. Foggy’s breath came a little faster before he could temper it.

“I can taste the difference between the salt in sweat and the salt in tears,” Matt said after a long time. 

“You… lick people’s tears?”

“Ha, _no_ ,” Matt said. “It’s in the air, no licking necessary. Sweat can be a little sour, but really it’s the dispersal that gives it away. And the humidity. Tears are more concentrated, and they actually have a different chemical composition if people cry for different reasons. I can taste that.”

“Seriously? What the hell do reasons taste like? Matt, you _are_ a super taster! A _psychic_ taster!”

“No, I’m not explaining it right.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t mean I can taste _why_ someone’s crying. I mean I can taste when someone’s tearing because they got dust or something in their eye because it’s cleaner, a purely physical reaction intended to clear the eye of a foreign body. Emotional tears — whether that emotion is positive or negative — contain hormones that muddy the composition of the tear, so those taste different. Taste can tell me whether I have to be emotionally supportive guy or help you get an eye wash guy. I admit I’m not so great at the former.”

Foggy turned on his side because he didn’t care if it was weird anymore. Matt was probably tasting his involuntary sleepy lust sweat anyway, so what did it matter?

“You do all right,” he said. “Work in progress.”

“Story of my life,” Matt said. Matt turned on his side to face Foggy, mouth a little twist of unhappiness.

“Story of all our lives, Matt,” Foggy said with a sigh. “You’re not…I don’t know. Somehow behind the rest of us on the path to enlightenment like you seem to think.”

“It feels like it, sometimes,” Matt murmured. His tone contained the stilted air of confession.

“I know, buddy,” Foggy said. “But what you gotta understand when you’re tasting all the tears of us regular humans is that we’re all just… floppy baby animals trying our hardest to figure out what being human means. And we stumble, and we fuck up, and we look around at everyone else who seems to have their shit together and wonder where we went wrong. But Matt, if you feel like that too it just means that in this, you’re 100% certifiably just like the rest of us.” 

Foggy could make out Matt’s smile. Tremulous and half-sad. 

“Don’t give me an emotional tear while we’re sharing a bed, Nelson, I’d never get over the humiliation.”

“I’ll Dutch oven away any sappy feelings you might be getting right about now.”

“Don’t you dare!”

They laughed as Matt kicked ineffectually in Foggy’s direction. Foggy pinched his lips together to make loud fart sounds until Matt’s laughter dissolved into full-on giggle-squeals that echoed around the basement.

Foggy’s phone buzzed with a text from Lindsey.

_Keep your kinky-ass scat sex in Hell’s Kitchen, Frogman_

It only made them laugh more.

—

Foggy woke up to discover he and Matt had twisted into Siamese twins in the night. Their legs were tangled together, but they bowed out from the hips, creating a misshapen Y in the bed. Foggy was on his back, but his legs didn’t get the memo and only one hip dug into the mattress, whereas Matt was fully on his side, back arched away from Foggy and snoring lightly. One of Foggy’s arms was trapped beneath Matt’s head, while one of Matt’s arms was stretched out over Foggy’s belly. Foggy barely had time to register it, much less savor it, before Matt tensed up and drew away.

“The kraken,” he whispered.

“What?”

That was the moment Lindsey barreled down the stairs and cannonballed into bed with them. Matt rolled neatly off the bed and landed like a cat, but Foggy was trapped beneath his sister, being hit in the face with his own hands.

“Come on, nerd,” she was saying. “We’re about to have French toast and here you are, sleeping on your ass.”

“Oh I love your mom’s French toast,” Matt said. He was pulling clothes out of his duffle bag and his hair was askew. There were pillow marks on his face. 

“What time is it?” Foggy rasped.

“It’s 10:30; we’re hungry and we are not above eating you desk jockeys for making us wait.”

“Urgh.”

“Sorry, Lindsey,” Matt said. “Guess we’ve been kind of sleep deprived lately, and this was just…” He gestured around as if helpless against the sleep this bed pulled them into. Foggy probably never woke up before Matt in his life, but he did today. Matt really needed to sleep more and Daredevil less.

“This cave is where vampires go to feel safe from the rays of the sun,” Foggy said to fill the trail of awkward Matt had left. 

“You have got to be the worst vampire in the entire world,” Lindsey said, clambering off him. “Aren’t they supposed to be sexy and seductive?”

“Don’t knock the goods, Nelson,” Matt said. “And he does get terrible sunburn.”

“My knight in shining armor,” Foggy said. He attained the vertical with a deep old man groan. When did he become a deep old man? Maybe Matt could pinpoint it with his super powers. “Is there time for me to shower or—”

“Shower after breakfast, Frog-face,” Lindsey said.

“You know, you could all go eat the World’s Finest French Toast, Amen and just save me some while I sleep some more.”

Lindsey snorted and Matt clapped him on the back.

“You can’t spare your poor mother five minutes of conversation, Mr. Big Shot?” Lindsey said, pitching her voice up to imitate Mom’s.

“Your mother who loves you and spent thirty-nine hours pushing your freakish nine-pound Nelson head out of her body with no drugs?” Matt continued in the same tone.

“Always with the freakish nine-pound head,” Foggy grumbled.

“Come on, big guy,” Matt said. “Up and at ’em.”

“Comb your damn hair,” Foggy said. He was pouting and he didn’t care who knew.

“I like how you stare at it, though.”

“You guys are giving me diabetes,” Lindsey said, “it’s disgusting. Shouldn’t you be over flirting by now? Shouldn’t you be well on your way to divorce like normal people?”

Foggy kicked at her feet even though it was tantamount to suicide.

“Get the fuck outta here, sea beast,” he said. “Two minutes without your rancid breath in my face and maybe I’ll be ready to go upstairs.”

Matt came up behind him and pressed his front into Foggy’s back, chin hooked over his shoulder, arms firm around his waist. Electricity jolted up Foggy’s spine, but Matt was wily: he knew Lindsey wouldn’t go for Foggy with Matt so near. Instead she screwed her face up and stuck her tongue out at him, hopping backwards like an electrocuted crab. 

“Two fucking minutes, Frogger,” she said, holding up two fingers. “Otherwise I’m back down here with a hose.”

Two fingers turned into one as she disappeared up the stairs. The house shook as she slammed the door. Foggy felt the way Matt snorted by the twitching of his abs against Foggy’s back. And ass. Couldn’t forget that. 

“Um, Matt?”

Matt released him and turned around to change into his clothes. Foggy shivered at the rush of cold against his back. 

“Are we putting on real clothes or just pajama pants and a new t-shirt?” Matt asked. Foggy paused for too long. “Foggy?”

“If we’re not showering first, I don’t see the point of real clothes,” Foggy said.

“I figured,” Matt said.

“Glad we’re on the same page then.” Foggy unfurled some soft sleep pants and shook them out.

“Foggy…”

“It’s fine,” Foggy said. “Let’s just…not. Okay?”

Matt clenched his jaw, but he didn’t say anything. He twisted up to peel his t-shirt off, dumb muscles rippling all over the place. Foggy caught a flash of hip before he turned away.

—

Foggy’s whole family was already at the dining room table when they emerged from the basement with armfuls of gifts.

“Throw those in the living room and come eat!” she said. She ushered them in and plopped them both down at the table, sat paper crowns on their heads and slid platefuls of the World’s Finest French Toast, Amen before them.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” she said, kissing Foggy’s cheek. “In the spirit of the season, I’ll forgive you for oversleeping.”

“It’s my fault, Mrs. Nelson,” Matt said. “I usually set my alarm but I forgot last night.”

A rumble of frustration bubbled up from Foggy’s throat.

“Not everything in the entire goddamn world is your fault, Matt,” he said. His mother thumped his arm.

“Franklin! Be nice!” 

She went around him to hug Matt’s head and wish him a Merry Christmas, too.

“I’m glad you’re here, Matthew,” she said. “And I’m sorry my son is a brute.”

Foggy ground his teeth together. It sure was easy for everyone else to judge him in their ignorance. Poor, sweet, blind Matt Murdock and his shitty partner. They didn’t know what Matt put him through. They didn’t know how Foggy had knelt over him, sobbing as he tried to stop his bleeding, terrified he’d never see him alive again. They didn’t know how Matt taunted him now with his own pitiful affections, and then played the big woebegone eyes for sympathy. Foggy sat back in his chair, fork and knife clutched like little flags in his fists. He made the mistake of sliding his gaze across the table at Lindsey, who smirked and poked her tongue into her cheek and pushed it all around. He scowled at her. 

Erin, on the other hand, was stone-faced and dead-eyed as she stared over the table at him. She shook her head so minutely, Foggy wasn’t sure Matt could have been able to tell even with all his senses turned up to eleven. Foggy’s throat felt tight and he dropped his attention to the food on his plate. Thick, soft brioche soaked in an egg mixture that included nutmeg and lemon in addition to the usual cinnamon sugar, fried up to a perfect golden brown. Ramekins of real maple syrup, and a smooth cream cheese filling swirled with fresh strawberries and jam with a tasteful bacon garnish. It was everything good and beautiful in the world. It was something Foggy dreamed of after countless nights of cheap take out. He didn’t know if he could bear to put it in his mouth. 

“You’re about to smother him in your boobs, Ma, Jesus,” Lindsey said. 

Mom released Matt and took her seat at one end of the table. Everyone had a mimosa, and they raised their glasses when she did.

“To family,” she said.

“Through thick and thin,” Dad said, sending Foggy a pointed eyebrow raise. 

“Merry Christmas,” Mom said. 

They clinked their glasses, a discordant cacophony of tinkling that must have wreaked havoc on Matt, but there he was anyway, tipping the mimosa down his throat. Foggy gulped all of his down in a single draw. He slammed down his champagne flute harder than he’d intended.

“I have to say something,” he said. Lindsey looked about ready to maul him for getting between her and the World’s Finest French Toast, Amen, Erin looked like she might actually cry for the first time since the Santa Claus incident of 1984, and Matt — well. Matt made big eyes at him like a baby bunny who’d just lost his mom in a tragic lawn mowing accident. “Matt and I aren’t—” Foggy’s lungs tightened. He could _feel_ the way Matt’s shoulders slumped beside him, and he couldn’t do it. After everything Matt had put him through, he still couldn’t throw the guy under the bus. “We aren’t having the easiest patch right now,” he said instead, and it was the truth, so at least he had that on his side. “It means a lot to have you guys supporting us like this. We really—” His voice cracked. “We really appreciate it. We love you. So, there’s that. Now eat your French toast.”

“Aw, honey,” Mom said, halfway out of her chair already.

“Mom, please,” Foggy said. “Please just leave it.” Matt pressed his thigh against Foggy’s, but Foggy jerked his away.

Mom sat back down and exchanged some fathomless, married-forty-years look with Dad. Lindsey shrugged and dug into her food. 

“Ma, this stuff could make you a millionaire, you know that?” she said around a mouthful of French toast. A half-masticated strawberry fell out of her mouth and plopped back onto her plate.

“I think you vastly overestimate how lucrative the cookbook industry is, but thanks for the vote of confidence, baby,” Mom said.

“It’s all about the internet these days, Ma,” Lindsey said. “Hit it big there and money’ll fall from the sky like leaves, I swear to God.”

“Your mother can hardly click a Facebook post without getting a virus,” Dad said. 

Erin put her fork and knife down with a clatter.

“So we’re all just gonna sit here being polite about this?” she said. 

Dad shifted in his seat. 

“Erin—”

“No!” she said. “I’m sorry, but no. Jesus. Fog.” She skewered him with eyes like ice picks. “You love your boy?”

Foggy couldn’t look at Matt. He could feel Matt’s attention on him and it was enough to make him want to throw himself off a cliff.

Around the lump in his throat, eyes never leaving Erin’s, he said, “Yes. God, yes, I do.”

“He worth every bit of pain being a human animal in a relationship causes you?”

Foggy swallowed.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“The joy of just being near him outweigh what happens when things are rough?”

 _Joy like ripping my beating heart out._ “Yes.”

Erin produced some keys out of nowhere and threw them at him. He caught them with the awesome power of his sternum. They clunked right into his French toast.

“Then you take Dad’s car and you go somewhere you can have it out without anyone listening in,” she said. “You don’t come back until the both of you have spoken your piece and ironed your shit out. It might feel like talking is the last thing you want to do with someone who’s pissing you off right now but Foggy, baby brother, light of my fucking pathetic life — there’s nothing worse than staring down the barrel at what’s left of your life and finding out you traded happiness for pride.”

Foggy looked at Dad, who only sighed and averted his eyes. He looked at Matt, who had rolled his shoulders inward and hunched himself into a wisp of a man diminished by the last few minutes, days, _months._

“What do you want, Matt?” he said, so quietly. Everyone heard, of course. He hoped it was thunder in Matt’s ears. “Tell me what to do and we’ll do it.”

Foggy was hyper-aware of the flutter of Matt’s eyelashes behind his glasses, and the thick liquid sound of his swallowing. Matt took a deep breath. 

“Let’s go,” he said.

—

Foggy didn’t know where he was going. He wasn’t from here. He just drove until he wasn’t in a suburban dystopia anymore and there were some trees in which he could hide his shame. Matt didn’t say a word the entire drive.

Foggy pulled over and sat staring straight ahead with his hands on the steering wheel. He could hear Matt’s breath. His own heartbeat. 

“Just say it,” Matt said, his voice a croak.

“What do you think I’m gonna say?” Foggy said. “You say you’re not psychic but how come you’re always so damn sure of what I’m gonna say, huh?”

“I don’t know!” Matt made a fist and smacked it into his own thigh. “I can’t predict anything about you right now, you’re so mad at me _all the time_ and now we’re fighting about fighting and God, Foggy, this, all this mess with me and you and the firm and the suit — it’s fucking _torture_ Fog, so please put me out of my misery, I can’t bear it anymore.”

“ _You’re_ being tortured! _You!_ ” A jagged laugh tore out of Foggy’s throat. “God, but that’s rich. Just dip me in the butter you’re churning, bud, ’cause we’re all getting fat tonight.”

“Okay, you know what?” Matt said. “I don’t actually have to sit here while you treat me like this. Thank God for global warming, because I’m walking back to your parents’ house and someone there can give me a ride back to the station. You can have the firm, I’m out.”

Matt had the door open and his legs outside when Foggy blurted, “How can you spring all this lovey-dovey shit on me when you _know_ how I feel?” Matt paused, his back to Foggy. A breeze blew in, too warm for December but making Foggy shiver nonetheless. Matt was as still as prey. Foggy took a deep breath. “How can you act like you care about me that way when you don’t? Is it funny to you? An ego stroke? This whole thing is so fucking mortifying because you’ve probably always been able to, I don’t know, smell the urea of unrequited love in my sweat or some shit, and then you pull this stunt anyway. I didn’t think you were that kind of person, Matt, but here we are!” He heaved in a lungful of air. “Here we are.”

“I’m not — Jesus, Fog.” Matt swung his legs back inside the car and shut the door. He turned halfway to face Foggy, but Foggy averted his gaze to the vicinity of the glove box. “I’m not _teasing_ you, for God’s sake. I thought you understood. I thought — I thought you wanted to get back at me for the Daredevil stuff, so you were punishing me with…” He cleared his throat. “With all of this.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Can you look at me, please?”

Foggy huffed, but he shifted in his seat and forced himself to look Matt in the face. His hair was, as ever, askew. A little bit red by the glint of the morning sun. 

“There,” Foggy said. “I’m looking at you. It’s breaking my fucking heart, Murdock.”

“Is there no chance, then?” Matt asked. “Whatever there might have been between us, have I fucked it up too badly?”

Foggy didn’t want to know what havoc his heart was wreaking on Matt’s ears. 

“You can’t say stuff like that to me,” he said. He was distantly aware that he was pleading. “You know why.”

Matt tucked his chin down.

“I hear you,” he said. He took a deep breath. “All right. Wow. That’s where we are, then.”

Foggy’s heart seized up. He probably wouldn’t survive this conversation.

“Do you mean it?” 

Matt tipped his face toward him and lifted a shoulder as if questioning.

“If you mean it, then say it,” Foggy said. His voice cracked. “None of this Catholic schoolboy pussyfooting repression shit right now, Matty, I can’t fucking take it. Say what you mean and say it plain.”

“I love you,” Matt said baldly. “I’ve loved you so long it’s my default setting.”

All of Foggy’s breath left him and he slumped backward into the driver’s seat. When he blinked, his eyes felt gummy. Matt was all he could see. 

“Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” he said. “You must have known. God, you must have known, I’m so pathetic.”

“You weren’t pathetic, Fog,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Maybe a little when Halo 3 came out.”

“Matt.”

“I didn’t deserve you, okay?” he said, throwing one hand out as if he could flick away all assertions that he should stop carrying the weight of the entire world on his back. “I was _lying_ to you from day one, do you think I didn’t know that? I had this huge thing I was keeping from you, from _everyone_ , and it meant I could never be close to you the way I wanted, could never forge real intimacy with you because I was a freak and a _liar_ and I just — I was never gonna be good enough, Fog. And you had Marci, sometimes, and the others. So it was enough. To have the dorm room, and the apartment, and the firm. I told myself it was enough.”

“And then I found you flayed on the floor like the saddest fish.”

A huff of a laugh.

“Well, that,” Matt said, “and you asked about farts. I know it was a joke but it wasn’t. It was…” The words seemed to dry up as he gave an uneven little shrug.

Foggy swallowed the saliva gathering at the base of his throat.

“Intimate,” he said. 

Matt nodded cautiously. 

“I’m not over it,” Foggy said, and Matt tilted his head again. “Daredevil, I mean. I thought you were dying on me, Matt, and I kinda think that every time you go out. I’m working on accepting that part of you, but it’s not something I’m gonna magically get over all of a sudden, okay?”

“Um.”

“Just. Just…” Foggy reached over the console between the seats, his palm upturned. Matt’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he set his hand in Foggy’s. Their fingers twined together and Foggy heard Matt’s breath hitch. “Okay?” 

“Yeah,” Matt said. He gave Foggy’s hand a squeeze. All the nerve endings in his palm lit up as if it were Christmas.

—

Foggy’s family, even Lindsey, did him the service of pretending everything was hunky dory when he and Matt walked back in two hours later.

Of course, the Froggy pictures were out, which was probably the #1 contributor to everyone’s good cheer but mostly made Foggy glad that Matt was blind.

“Oh, I love the Froggy pictures,” Matt Murdock, traitor, said.

“Let me describe them to you in loving detail,” Lindsey said. “Again.”

“I’m gonna go back to the woods to live forever alone,” Foggy said, but Matt tugged on his hand to drag him to the couch. He sat, dumbfounded as Matt settled in beside him, one leg half draped over Foggy’s own. Matt sighed and melted into him. Foggy’s chest was full, his arms fuller, and his happiness was so bright and so loud, he couldn’t even hear his sister tell the story of a hideous baby elf costume, speech impediments, and how Frankie became Froggy became Foggy.

—

Ten hours, thirty presents, two showers, one Catholic mass, one feast, and one frantic make out session amid the debris of Foggy’s upstairs bedroom later, Foggy was holding one hand up in the universal sign for “get behind me” as he used the other to slide open the bedside table drawer ever so slowly.

His shoulders drooped and he lost all will to hold his hands up. 

“What is it?” Matt asked, hovering near his shoulder. “It smells like—”

“Condoms,” Foggy said. “And lube. Jesus.”

“Well. That was nice of her, I guess.”

Foggy scoffed and grabbed a box of condoms in each hand before spinning around to face his partner in all things.

“This one—” He shook his right hand. “—contains specialty condoms in super magnum triple XL that you could probably wear on your head. There’s a post-it with your name on the front. The A has a smiley face in it.”

“…Oh.”

“And this one—” Foggy shook his left hand. “—contains novelty finger condoms that wouldn’t fit over your pinkie. Can you guess what’s on the post-it for this one?”

“Well.”

“Go on, Matty, I know you can do it.”

“…A drawing of a frog. Probably dead.”

“There’s my boy,” Foggy said. “Summa cum fuckin’ laude.” 

“Is the lube…”

“Yeah,” Foggy said. “Shaped like a butt. God only knows where she got it.”

Matt laughed and reached around Foggy to touch it. The brush of his arm against Foggy’s side sent electricity crackling up Foggy’s spine. Apparently all it took to break down years of carefully constructed defenses against Matt’s wiles were some heartfelt confessions and heated kisses. Who knew?

“Matty,” Foggy whispered. 

Matt took his glasses off and shouldered underneath Foggy’s arm, pressing them chest to chest. Or he would have if Foggy’s gut weren’t in the way. He didn’t seem to mind, and Foggy’s blood was rushing too quickly for him to give it much thought.

“Yeah,” Matt said, his voice all low and rough.

“Tell me about touch.”

Matt slid his hands down Foggy’s sides to settle on his hips. Foggy gasped when his fingertips slipped beneath the waistband of his boxers. Each breath pushed their bodies into fuller contact.

“Touch is so much more complex than people think,” Matt said. “I’ve often wondered if it were actually two senses, conflated: sensation and awareness.” He pushed his hands fully into Foggy’s underwear and cupped his ass, anchoring their hips together. “The other senses are confined to a single bodily locus, but touch — I touch with my whole body, and all my senses converge. Sometimes I feel like everything I experience is part of the constellation of touch.”

Foggy shuddered, his prick surging helplessly into Matt’s. He wound his arms around Matt’s neck and set his forehead against Matt’s. Matt gave his ass a squeeze, and Foggy’s eyes closed. He could feel the curve of Matt’s smile like a ghost against his lips, and he shivered. 

“I can feel your heart pounding in my stomach,” Matt said. “I can feel your blood pumping hard through your veins like currents on my skin. I can feel the temperature of your body go up when you blush.” Matt pressed his nose into the curve of Foggy’s neck and breathed him deep. He hauled him closer, Foggy’s cock helplessly hard and grinding into Matt’s. Foggy gasped. “I can feel your eyes on me from across the room, the office, the street. I can feel the air shift around you when you turn around to look for me. I can feel the sound of your voice reverberating through my body when you say my name.”

“God, _Matt_.”

“Just like that, Foggy,” Matt said. “Just like that.”

Foggy whimpered before he pressed his mouth into Matt’s, hot and greedy. He wound both hands up in Matt’s hair and tilted his head back to kiss him deeper. Matt’s groan rumbled through Foggy’s chest and Foggy wished, just for a moment, that he could feel things as intensely as Matt could. It must be intoxicating and perfect and amazing, to have this moment feel like the birth of an entire universe between them.

Matt sank onto the bed and dragged Foggy along with him. He yanked Foggy’s shirt up over his head and Foggy scrambled to reciprocate. Down to their underwear and tangled together, Foggy pressing Matt into the mattress, Matt laid his palms on Foggy’s chest, fingertips brushing the smattering of moles there. His breath stuttered as if they burned him.

“God I’ve wanted this,” he said. “Foggy, I’ve wanted this so long, can we, can you let me—”

“Tell me.”

“Just—” Matt pushed Foggy off him, shucked his underwear, and took Foggy’s too before straddling him and nosing into the space behind his ear. “You smell _so good_ ,” he said. 

Foggy ran his hands up Matt’s thighs. They were muscular and firm, dusted with soft dark hair that thickened at the apex, and they were driving Foggy crazy.

“I thought smell was just data,” he said haltingly. 

“Not you,” Matt said. “You are… pure pleasure.”

Foggy turned his head to catch Matt in a kiss. Matt rocked his hips against Foggy’s, their cocks meeting in ecstatic collision. Matt gasped into Foggy’s mouth.

“I need—”

“Anything, Matty, take anything.”

“ _God_ , Foggy.”

Matt pinned Foggy with his hips as his hands crept up his body to cradle his face. He took a deep draw of whatever scent Foggy gave off at the juncture of his neck and shoulder and then dragged his nose into the hollow at the base of his throat and over his clavicle. Foggy’s cock so full it ached, and the press of Matt’s pelvis against it was never going to be enough. Foggy stroked his hands over Matt’s ass — his firm, round, _gorgeous_ ass and he wasn’t jealous at all if he got to touch this manifestation of divine perfection. He ran his hands up Matt’s back, which was strong and supple, lashed with lean muscle. He wanted to soak up and memorize how it felt to touch Matt. He wanted to absorb Matt into his chest and never let him go. 

Then, Matt turned his head to press an ear to the center of Foggy’s chest. He settled his entire body over the length of Foggy’s and was still, listening. Foggy’s breath came quick and uneven. He settled a hand into Matt’s hair. Soft. Fluffy. Foggy was dismayed at the deficiencies of his vocabulary when it came to describing what it was to get everything he ever wanted. Maybe this was how Matt felt all the time. 

“You sound like the ocean,” Matt said. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Foggy said.

“The ocean is a whole world unto itself,” Matt said. “No one knows exactly how deep it is. Eighty percent of all life on Earth lives there, and we don’t even know what it all is because we’re incapable of exploring it. The ocean is a force and a mystery. You’re like that, inside: unfathomable and teeming with life.”

“I have the weirdest boner right now.”

Matt’s laugh skittered over the hyper-sensitized skin of Foggy’s nipple. A simple tilt of his head and he sucked the nipple into his mouth. Foggy gasped, his hips rolling upward without his volition. His nipples were tight and full, and Matt seemed to know just how much suction and tooth action he wanted. 

“Is that — _ah!_ — one of your super powers?” 

Matt only hummed around his mouthful and ground his cock into Foggy’s. Foggy whimpered beneath him. He grabbed a handful of hair with one hand and a handful of ass with the other. He wanted another kiss, maybe a kiss that lasted forever, and maybe he wanted to flip them over and swallow Matt whole, push inside him and make him his, but Matt was scenting him and tasting him and _knowing_ him in the way only Matt was capable of, all while looking absolutely drunk on it. How could Foggy get in his way?

Matt abandoned one nipple in favor of the other. Foggy’s eyes slid shut. He closed his arms around Matt’s shoulders and held him, rubbing a cheek into his hair. He smelled like fruit shampoo and Christmas cookies. When Matt began to move down his body, tracing a map into Foggy’s skin with his nose, Foggy tangled both hands in his hair, reverent. He forced his eyes open so he could watch Matt doing this, enjoying him. He wasn’t actually convinced this wasn’t some sort of cruel hallucination. 

Matt sucked kisses into each mole and freckle. He nuzzled a trail of his own making across and down Foggy’s body, sniffing and licking along the way. He breathed deep at Foggy’s underarm and the crease of his thigh, at the near-invisible wisp of hair between his pecs, at his love handles and his muffin top. He closed his mouth around the lower rim of his naval and sucked, which made Foggy jack-knife up with a gasp at the squirming, swirling sensation it inspired in his gut even as his cock grew impossibly harder.

“Jesus!” 

“Shh,” Matt murmured into his belly button. “Not on his birthday.”

“You’re the _worst_.” Foggy groaned and fell backward into the pillows.

Matt made a considering sound as he burrowed further into Foggy’s belly. Foggy squeezed his eyes shut and tried to still any errant jiggling that might occur as Matt swept his hand over the swell of his stomach, fingertips lingering on the jagged streaks of pink and silver that radiated outward from his bellybutton to his hips.

“Don’t,” Matt said. His voice buzzed quiet and heady on Foggy’s skin. “I want to feel all of you.”

Foggy’s breath shuddered out of him as he let go of the tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying. From his shoulders to his calves, he let himself melt, let himself occupy in full this body Matt was luxuriating in. He let himself be the swallowing ocean Matt said he was, vast and powerful.

Matt took Foggy’s cock in hand with a firm grip and gave it a solid squeeze before sealing his mouth over the head and sinking down over its length. Foggy let out a strangled gasp, back arching helplessly. He didn’t let himself thrust into Matt’s mouth, but Matt moaned and took him in deeper anyway. Matt pumped Foggy’s cock into his mouth with one hand and groped at his hip with the other. With a little coaxing, he hooked one of Foggy’s knees over his shoulder and pressed his arm over Foggy’s hips to anchor him to the bed. Foggy bit back a cry and buried his hands in Matt’s hair. 

The strength of Matt’s blowjob was in his enthusiasm. The suction and the rhythm and the sloppy slick red lips were all amazing, too, but Matt’s sheer enjoyment at giving Foggy pleasure was what made Foggy leak and pant. Matt hummed and groaned even as he took Foggy in deeper. He slurped and sucked and swirled his tongue until starbursts began to cascade behind Foggy’s eyelids. He didn’t want to come from this, didn’t want this to be over yet, but Matt seemed dead set on sucking Foggy’s soul straight out of his cock, and Foggy was so far gone, he would gladly give it to him. 

The muffled moans around his cock grew more frantic until Matt pulled off, shoved his face behind Foggy’s balls, and inhaled sharply. Foggy kept himself from yelping through sheer willpower, but then Matt’s hands were behind Foggy’s knees hiking his legs up and his tongue was licking a stripe from coccyx to scrotum and Foggy’s eyes rolled back in his head. 

“Ngh!” he grunted, or something.

Matt only growled and pressed closer into Foggy’s ass. He laved the flat of his tongue over Foggy’s hole until it was slick and aching, and then he pressed inside with the tip of his tongue, pointed and agile and absolutely the greatest thing that had ever happened to his ass. He pushed inside in increments, and Foggy’s hole gave slowly until Matt’s entire tongue was inside and Foggy could feel his ass grasping at it, aching for more. For one wild moment, he thought he could feel his pulse in his own asshole. When Matt closed his mouth over Foggy’s hole and sucked hard, flickering his tongue over the rim all the while, Foggy’s heart went haywire and the flush that was probably mottling his entire body engulfed his face in flames.

“Matty — Matty, oh _God_ , not that I don’t appreciate it, but aren’t you — isn’t that — too much?”

“No,” Matt said in a deep growl. “It’s the deepest part of you, distilled. It’s—” A tiny, pained moan rumbled out of the base of Matt’s throat. “—intoxicating.”

“Oh.” Foggy giggled a little, and it was totally not humiliating at all, and then Matt was kneeling on the mattress, pulling Foggy’s ass up so he was half a crescent roll anchored to the bed by his shoulders. He made a feast of Foggy’s ass again, zealous and unabashed in his enjoyment. For his part, Foggy was emitting a low keening sound constantly now, and he really hoped _his entire family a mere two floors above them_ couldn’t hear it, but he was helpless to stop it. His hole felt slack and hungry, somehow greedier than it was when only fingers breeched him. Matt was _thorough_. 

The position was awkward, but Foggy reached up to jerk his cock. Matt paused in his gluttony to press an ear into Foggy’s perineum. Foggy’s asshole clenched around the emptiness it left.

“What does — what does this sound like?”

“Like liquid happiness.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Matt set him down and popped up between his legs, looking like the world’s most disheveled wet dream. His mouth was swollen, his flush rivaled Foggy’s, and his hair was _hilarious_. Those rippling muscles were fair game for Foggy to perv on. Foggy ran his hands up Matt’s arms, then pulled him toward himself by his perfectly hard triceps. He rocked up and kissed Matt deep, the scent of his own musk lingering. Matt growled and pushed Foggy’s thighs open with his own so he could thrust into the humid space between their bodies. 

“Foggy, I’m sorry, I need—”

“What? What do you need?”

“Please, I need to be inside you. I know it’s quick and you don’t usually do that, but I—”

Foggy pushed three fingers into Matt’s mouth. That shut him right up. 

“I would have jumped you in the car earlier if I thought there was enough room in the backseat for two grown men,” he said. “Anything you want, Matty, I promise I’ve been thinking about it since the moment I met you. Stop apologizing and sex me up already.”

The only warning Foggy got when Matt lunged forward to plunder his mouth was a growl that he heard and felt in equal measure. Foggy caught him, and the pillows caught Foggy, and Foggy used the opportunity to pull his legs up and cradle Matt between his thighs. Foggy tried to get as much of their skin to touch as possible, but Matt pulled off of him and flipped him over in a single fluid ninja move that would have been infuriating if it hadn’t been so impressive.

Foggy might have squeaked. 

Matt trailed his hands down Foggy’s back, his lips closely following. He pushed gently between Foggy’s shoulder blades so he braced himself low on his elbows, ass in the air. Foggy heard the bedside table drawer open and before he could protest, Matt had pumped out a generous portion of Lindsey’s butt lube and pressed it inside Foggy’s ass. Foggy moaned and rocked back into the penetration. He always forgot how good it felt to be filled up that way, like he was completely open and at his partner’s mercy. Stretched and wanton. His eyes rolled back and his ass clenched and he was begging for it, pleading with Matt’s name tripping off his tongue.

“Oh shit,” Matt said. All activity behind Foggy stopped.

“What?” Foggy said. “What?”

“ _Novelty condoms,_ ” Matt hissed.

“Fuck.”

“We could — we could go to the supermarket and buy some, we could pop in really fast—”

“Matty, are you clean?”

“Fog—”

“Just answer the question.”

“Of course I am,” Matt said.

“Me too,” Foggy told him. “Just do it. Please. Please, Matty, I want you to.”

Matt groaned, and he must have been too far gone to protest because Foggy felt the blunt head of his cock press into his hole. Foggy bore down against him and his asshole gave enough to suck him inside almost all the way. Matt choked off the shout that threatened to shake the house, and Foggy pitched forward to muffle his in the pillows. Matt draped himself over Foggy’s back, breath hot and quick in his ear, and Foggy wondered if it was Matt’s heartbeat he could feel pounding between them or his own. 

“God, Fog,” Matt said, strangled. “God, you have no idea.” 

Foggy moaned and blinked stars from his eyes. He was so full, so possessed and replete. He felt skewered with Matt so huge inside him, but it was an expansive feeling that seemed to radiate through his body to wind around his heart. His ass clutched greedily at Matt’s cock, and Foggy became aware, slowly, that Matt was making tiny, needful sounds.

“So tell me,” Foggy said, panting. He pushed up onto his hands and knees and thrust backward onto Matt’s dick. Matt’s hands convulsed on Foggy’s hips and he keened. 

“It’s—” He squeezed Foggy’s ass and pulled out only to thrust back inside. He grazed Foggy’s prostate and sent Foggy moaning into the pillows, toes curling helplessly. “I love how your ass feels nestled into my pelvis like this,” he said. “It’s soft and _round_ and when I’m all the way inside you like this, I can feel every downy little hair like feathers on my skin — God, Foggy, it’s gonna make me come and that’s not even what it’s like on the inside.”

“Matt, please, please fuck me, go hard, please, please, Matty, I need it.”

“God,” Matt said. He withdrew and thrust back inside. Foggy scrabbled at the sheets for purchase and tilted his hips up for the best angle. Matt set a quick, pounding rhythm that kept Foggy spread open and smacked his prostate with each thrust. “Foggy, Foggy, I can feel your heartbeat, oh my _God_.”

Foggy dropped to his stomach and twisted so he was half on his back, one leg pulled up to the side. He pulled Matt down for a kiss that robbed him of his breath, his thoughts, his awareness of anything but the dick in his ass and the tongue in his mouth. Matt reared up, head thrown back and mouth hanging wide, and fucked into Foggy with hard staccato thrusts before he stiffened, breath caught in his throat, and came in hot spurts inside Foggy’s body. With a thin, final cry, he slumped over Foggy’s body and laid his forehead on his collar bone. Foggy shifted so he was all the way on his back, thighs open and framing Matt’s. He stroked a hand down his spine, damp with sweat, and kissed his hairline over and over.

“You’re so good, Matty,” he said. “You’re so damn good.”

“Foggy…”

Foggy cupped his face and kissed him, slow and deep. 

“Not gonna take much,” he whispered. “And you’re still hard.”

Matt got to his knees, pushing Foggy’s legs up so his feet dangled around Matt’s ears. He caressed Foggy’s thick thighs with reverent appreciation and rocked into him, angling upward to hit his prostate. Foggy choked off a moan, but he reached out for touch and Matt caught one hand in his, tangled their fingers, pressed his mouth, open, into Foggy’s palm. He reached down with his other hand and gripped Foggy’s dick tight. Foggy groaned, eyes slipping shut and ass tightening around Matt’s cock. Matt twisted his hand on the upstroke and Foggy felt the tendrils of climax winding around the base of his spine. 

“Matty—” Like a warning, like a demand. Matt heard what he couldn’t say, of course Matt heard him, and he fucked him harder, faster. Foggy could feel Matt’s come seeping out of him, and at the thought of it, he was soaring into the supernova of his orgasm, light bursting behind his eyes as he spurted all over his stomach. He drifted, happy and hazy, for a long time.

When he came back to himself, he found Matt’s head on his belly and he knew he’d been licked clean. Matt was curled around him like a puppy, legs entangled, with one hand stroking his thigh. 

“Is sex always like that for you?” he asked after a while.

“No,” Matt said, hoarse. “It’s never been like that before.”

Foggy’s throat suddenly felt tight. He couldn’t say anything, so he set a hand in Matt’s hair instead. The low light of the lamp on the bedside table seemed suddenly harsh, so he reached over to shut it off. In the dark, Matt was… more. More himself, somehow. He smelled better and his muscles were harder and his skin was softer. He became whom he had always been, whom he was always meant to be, while Foggy hadn’t been paying attention. Or maybe it was Foggy’s imagination. Maybe Foggy was just… post coital and fanciful, a little maudlin. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. 

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said after a long time. He wondered what Matt heard when all Foggy heard was silence.

Matt snorted.

“What, great sex?” he said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, bud.”

“No,” Foggy said, and sighed. “The rage. The violence.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t think you were like that, and it took me by surprise. I’m… adjusting.”

He felt the bounce of Matt’s Adam’s apple on his belly. 

“It’s the devil,” Matt whispered. “My grandma always said.”

Foggy took a long draw of breath and let it out slow and even. He stroked through Matt’s hair, gentle as a dove, because Matt needed it. Foggy needed it, too. 

“Naw, Matt,” he said. “That kind of fury is pure grade A human.”

Eyelashes, brushing against his skin. Maybe he was just always going to be hyper-aware of Matt from now on. Maybe he always had been. 

“I need to do what I do, Fog.”

“I know,” Foggy said. “And I’m not stopping you. I’m glad, even.”

“That’s a sudden change of heart,” Matt said. “I guess I should have had sex with you months ago.”

Foggy flicked his ear. 

“Dick,” he muttered.

Matt turned his cheek enough to press a kiss into Foggy’s belly button as if in apology. 

“I just mean,” Foggy said, “that I think I understand now. About you. And Daredevil.”

“Tell me,” Matt said, just this side of pleading, and Foggy closed his eyes.

“You feel so much,” Foggy whispered. “You smell and hear and taste and feel everything, and it turns around and lights you up like something tangible. Emotions — yours and everyone else’s — aren’t abstract for you; they’re literal. Palpable. You don’t take on the world’s pain like I thought you did — it invades you. It weighs you down.”

Matt let out a ragged breath, his arms tightening around Foggy’s hips. 

“You gotta let it out,” Foggy said. “You gotta channel it and make it a force for what’s good and right, or else it’ll immolate you and take everyone you love with it.”

“Yes.” A word through sparse hair, more breath than sound. 

“And that’s why the silk sheets,” Foggy said. “Silk sheets and expensive coffee and foofy soap. Because it goes the other way, too.”

Matt turned on his stomach, burying his face in Foggy’s. He groped for Foggy’s hand and gripped it too tight, but Foggy didn’t mind.

“But you weren’t gonna let yourself have me,” Foggy said softly. “Why?”

Matt only shook his head. Foggy pulled his hand up to his lips and kissed each finger one by one. 

“You deserve everything good, Matt,” he said. He felt Matt’s kiss, warm next to his navel. He swallowed. “Tell me a secret.”

Matt gave a damp, ragged laugh.

“Don’t you have all of them by now?” he said, voice wrecked.

“Humor me.”

He waited, listening to Matt breathe. It was late. No one stirred upstairs, and his phone didn’t buzz with sisterly excoriation. By some miracle, they hadn’t disturbed anyone with their ardor. If he closed his eyes, he thought he could hear the wind through the trees.

Matt shifted to lay his head on Foggy’s shoulder and drape a leg over Foggy’s hips.

“My favorite sound in the world is the sound of your voice, saying my name,” he said. “Your heartbeat like a muffled bass drum behind your teeth, beating out its own rhythm. Your chest, a concert hall. The way your larynx vibrates, and how that bounces off the walls and the floor and the ceiling — or if we’re outside, how it interacts with the breeze and the leaves and other people’s skin. How it has a flavor, and it’s a little different depending on where we are and what you’ve eaten, but those singular notes are still there, no matter what, anchoring me to you. To the city. To my purpose.”

“Matty…”

“Exactly like that,” he said. 

Foggy closed his eyes as his breath hitched. He turned his head enough to set his cheek in Matt’s hair. He pressed their hands to his chest and exhaled. The beat of Matt’s pulse in his fingertips lulled him to sleep.

**End**


End file.
